


The Properties of Ice

by Jaspen



Category: The Trinity Prophecy - Marissa Kinzel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24913303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaspen/pseuds/Jaspen
Summary: The cracks splintered up—past his palm, his wrist, spiderwebbing across his forearm in what was both forever and no time at all.His vision tunneled, the bright light shining through the cracks. When had he lost his glove? It didn’t matter. The magma titan didn’t seem to think it was so important, and was coming to crush him anyways.He could hear Anthy’s voice distantly as light overcame him. It didn’t really hurt at all.
Relationships: Leof/Neros





	The Properties of Ice

**Author's Note:**

> This was written before the book was published, but this fandom needs fic, so here it is
> 
> This scene is so much better in canon, I read it again before editing this and couldn't stop feeling things. [Pick up your own copy if you haven't already](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-trinity-prophecy_marissa-kinzel/26577879/#edition=32931770&idiq=38941972) and read it for yourself!

It was cold.

Everything had such a profound chill, he couldn’t keep focused, couldn’t think.

There wasn’t any pain; no, he’d stopped feeling the pain way back. Hadn’t said anything about the fissures in his wrist, hadn’t seen the need. It wasn’t distracting his focus, and his staff was working well enough as a conduit. He didn’t need to worry them about the ice’s progression.

The cracks splintered up—past his palm, his wrist, spiderwebbing across his forearm in what was both forever and no time at all.

Leof wasn’t even really an issue—he knew about it, of course, but not much. Anthy on the other hand... 

That didn’t matter so much right now. Anthy would be mad, yeah, but she would... she would understand. She always understood—how to fight, how to talk to others, everything had been so much easier with her along on this journey.

His vision tunneled, the bright light shining through the cracks. When had he lost his glove? It didn’t matter. The magma titan didn’t seem to think it was so important, and was coming to crush him anyways.

He could hear Anthy’s voice distantly as light overcame him. It didn’t really hurt at all.

And then Neros was back; snapped into focus as he was plucked off the ground, Anthy grabbing him and pulling him along in her swing. Leof sent a volley of fireballs at the iced remains. Neros reached out to—to do something, but stopped. Anthy keeps asking him questions he doesn’t answer. Neros keeps staring at the blackened skin where his arm used to be.

_ He _

_ He had no _

_ No no no no no no this can’t be, where _

_ Where was _

_ Where was his— _

“Neros!” He came to, a searing pain on the surface of his cheek that only brought further into focus that _he had no arm_. He couldn’t hold a hand to his cheek, he couldn’t even twitch his fingers. He could feel it, but at the same time, it was wrong, fake, _gone_ _gone gone_ —

Someone was shaking him—or maybe he was just shaking—but he looked up and she was there, and she looked so mad; so so mad, and worried.

“What was that out there?!” She was yelling. She was trying not to, but she was, and he flinched despite himself. “Are you alright?! Neros, say—say something! Anything!!”

“I,” he tried, but his throat was just so dry. He coughed and there was a wet pressure on his back, and then it stopped. He’d have to apologize to Pontius for not listening to his advice in the first place.

“Lady Anthea, I think he’s still in shock,” Pontius tried, oh Gods did he try. “Perhaps a spell was cast upon him, or...”

_ Curse. _ He could hear it in the guardian’s voice now, the hesitance to admit his knowledge on a subject Neros kept closer to his chest than anything else.

“Or what?!” Neros could see cuts in her cheek, her shoulders. A voice in the back of his mind wondered how she got them; if they would scar. “A curse? You said you had it under control!”

“I just...” he didn’t know what had happened. One minute he was focusing a spell, the next, everything was in tatters. “I had to do something! It didn’t even hurt, I don’t know why this happened!”

“So you can’t feel pain then?” She stomped her foot, anger coursing through every fiber of her being. “Or you can’t feel at all?! How long has this been going on, a week? A month? More? You look at your hand every time you touch something with it, do you think I wouldn’t’ve noticed something so weird?!”

“Well, it’s not like I can look at it anymore!” The words felt like righteous venom on his tongue.

“You said ‘why’ Neros, not how! You knew something was up, why didn’t you tell me?!”

“What am I supposed to say, Anthy?! I can’t feel my forearm anymore? My whole right side’s kinda numb? An ice mage with frostbite, that’ll go over well!!”

“Yes! That is  _ exactly _ what you say!” Gods, why was she so infuriating? Why didn’t she get it?? “If we had known it was an issue, we could have prevented this!” His fingers dug into his palm, the one hand he had left.

“How would you handle the magma titan, then?! You  _ know _ your arrows are veritably useless against them!” Everything was so cold. His words felt like sharpened glass.

“I’d’ve figured it out!”

“Well, I can’t afford to wait that long, Anthea!” He snapped, pushing to his feet despite the vertigo, despite his center of balance having shifted dramatically. He just couldn’t handle her towering over him anymore. “This isn’t some carefree adventure! My parents are frozen in some sort of stasis back in Vetur! I just left my people without a word of explanation, and I can’t just wait around to figure out how to circumvent one curse!!”

“Carefree?” Anthea looked at him, the shock stark and vulnerable on her face. And then it melted, liquid anger shining in her eyes, coursing through her veins. “ _ Carefree _ ?!!” She was angry. So angry that when her hand smashed into the large boulder at her side, it caved in around her fist. “At least you know your parents are alive! At least you still  _ have _ a people to return to! Do you even  _ know _ how long this journey has taken? How long we’ve been away?”

It was—they’d been gone a while that was the point that he’d been trying to make. Because of all their dallying—

“One year, four months, and twenty-seven days. That’s almost a year and a half, Neros! It takes _at maximum_ , three and a half months for Arborians to snag.”

Wait, what? Snag?

“Do you have any concept of what I’m going to see when I return? A forest of dead faces, that’s what. I never even got to say goodbye, but go off I guess!”

“Anthy—”

“No, I’m done,” She turned away from him, gathered up her things. There wasn’t a lot, but she had a pack and a canteen. “You can sit here and sulk if you want, but I’m not going to waste my time with any more of this. I have a god to smite, and I’m going to do it with or without you.”

“Lady Anthea wait!” Pontius jumped forward, but Anthea swatted him away.

“Fuck off, bubbles,” She grumbled, before angrily storming out of the camp. Pontius looked at Neros, then at Anthea’s retreating figure, then Neros again before taking off after her. 

“But—but you don’t even know where Umbros _i_ _ s _ !”

Neros should go after her. He crumpled slowly, curling up into a tight ball in the dirt. He could feel every sting, every wound from the fight amplified by a thousand. His arm ached where his forearm should be, the skin blackened at the stump, a surefire sign of deep-set frostbite. He felt wounded. He felt numb. Neros didn’t go after her.

He stayed like that for some time, both listening and not listening to the ambient sounds around him; and then it was night. Daylight had faded into the horizon sometime between blinks, and he was left only with a nearby fire as a light source.

A rustle of cloth brought him back to himself. Nothing big, just the slight  _ shhhshk _ of fabric against rock. Neros was curious despite himself and peeked out of his cocoon to see Leof, sitting in front of the fire, and using a small pick to add minute details to something small in his hand.

“You’re still here?” He asked. His voice was louder than he’d meant it to be in the quiet, and all too quiet at the same time. He flinched, but Leof didn’t seem to notice.

“First rule of survival, don’t split up,” He picked up a larger rock, this one carved into a cylindrical shape and hollowed out. He placed the small pieces inside, taking some twine, and fitting it there as well. Leof’s pack was open, several tools and bags of things spread out about him. Well, that explained why his was the heaviest. “Figured It’d be harder to pick us off if we were still paired up.”

“You seem so certain someone is following us,” Neros murmured, trying to push himself up only to find he needed to roll over to do it. He felt his heart drop into his gut. He really... he really had no arm. There was just no way to deny it anymore.

“Better to be cautious than dead,” Leof shrugged, eyes still focused on his work. Neros shifted a bit closer so he could watch. He didn’t understand any of it, but he could get absorbed in the small movements, could forget for a little while. Neros watched him add more twine, more gears, until the inner parts of it were a complicated system he couldn’t really understand past the uneven symmetry of it. “Here.”

And then it was being handed to him, and all he could do was look at it, lost in confused in a way that was new to him. Leof rolled his eyes and shifted closer, turning Neros by the shoulders so he could get a better look at Neros’ arm.

Neros flinched when he realized what Leof was going for and held his arm closer, hiding his mistakes away from the world. Leof didn’t question him, didn’t snarl, or glare, or scoff as he expected. He just looked at Neros through his flickering fringe; calm, and patient in a way Neros had never before seen. Like this, it was easy to hand his insecurities over. Leof didn’t say anything but got straight to work.

The Ember had always been one to shy away from any physical contact, so it surprised Neros just how warm his hand was. It made sense, really; Leof was molten beneath his skin as far as Neros could tell, but even with his hands dimmed, they were still unbelievably warm. Leof held onto his elbow, propping it up from beneath while his other hand, dimmed so far he couldn’t see the light, moved in an arc around the blackened skin at the stub of his arm. They stayed like that for some time, Leof’s fingers moving ever so closer. He was being exceedingly gentle about this. Neros didn’t know if he’d be more embarrassed to point it out, or keep it to himself.

Before he could think further on that, a dull ache started to form at the base of his arm. He focused instead on Leof’s hands, but it just kept getting sharper, and sharper, until he flinched, and nearly tore his limb from the Ember’s grip. It didn’t go very far though, Leof seemed to have been expecting this, and buckled down, holding on firmly to Neros’ elbow at an angle he couldn’t even twist out. The pain grew sharper, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth. He could feel his eyes watering, his other hand fisting into the cloth of his pants in an attempt to distract himself with other physical sensations.

“Talk to me.”

“Huh?” He looked up, blearily through watery eyes, though Leof didn’t look back. Instead he stared, focused on the arm in question, his fingers gently tracing the bare inches of blackened skin.

“Talk to me,” He repeated.

“About—” Neros hissed again, his vision blurring slightly. “About what?”

“Anything,” There was a little steam, and Neros had to look away. He didn’t let himself think about what exactly Leof was doing. “So long as you’re talking.”

It took him an eternity to decide, and yet, it wasn’t that long at all.

“M-my mother wasn’t born n-noble,” he started out, and he could see her in his mind, the gentle folds of her dresses, the warmth to her smile. He’d do anything to see her again. “She-she was known for her beauty, and her kindness, and Fath-father fell for her right—right away. It was only after—after, after their marriage that she developed any ability w—” he had to pause, to breathe as a searing pain shot through his arm. “... with ice.

“Father trained since he wasssss— ... was little, practiced all kinds of weap-weaponry. He taught me only a little before—before... ” he gulped, shuddering from the memory before moving on. “They’re such good people I—I can’t let them down now, I just can’t. I couldn’t pos-possibly return home without some sort of c-cure, some—something. If I don’t... There has to be a way, I hav’t—I have to find... ” He buckled a little bit, the pain too strong to bear. Beads forming at the corners of his eyes before falling to the dirt.

“What if—what if there isn’t? If I can’t find anything, if—if I l-lose them I’ll have noth-nothing left, I can’t—they’re all I ha—” There’s a flicker of pain so sharp, he nearly screams; the sound caught in his throat, unable to claw its way out. He’s trembling, can feel the tremors in every fiber of his being. He had fallen to Leof’s shoulder at some point, using him as support to keep him up, but it’s just too strong. The pain causes his vision to back, and it’s only after he’s come back that he realizes the pain has vanished.

Well, not vanished, but by comparison, it’s much more tolerable now.

He’s been moved, his back against the rock Anthy made a crater in earlier. There was sap on it, pooled in the middle of the dent, and he really hoped she would return soon. He was too exhausted to be angry with her anymore, he just wanted her back.

His side was warm, and that was when he realized Leof was still there. He had his head sort of pillowed on Leof’s shoulder, his shortened arm settled in his lap as Leof worked a piece of carved stone around it. They were silent as he worked, only the crackling of their fire and the clinking of stone on stone to fill the quiet.

“The way I see it,” Leof said after a while. His voice was low, and easy to listen to. It soothed Neros, in a way, placed a balm to his pain and eased it into the distance. “You both said some shitty things. So when she comes back—and don’t start on me with any of that ‘if’ bullshit, she couldn’t leave you to fend for yourself if she tried—you’re going to apologize, and she’ll call you stupid for it and also apologize, and she’ll squeeze your soul into the Ether, and I’ll have to avoid her for the next three days because she’s feeling huggy.”

Neros laughed a little at this. It felt nice to actually laugh despite everything, but Gods, he was so tired…

“It’s probably not good to bottle everything up like that,” Leof added after a moment. He’d gotten the cylinder on Neros’ arm now, connected at the stub and was testing out the swivel points at where a wrist was likely supposed to be. There were fingers and everything. Neros would probably have cried if he wasn’t so drained. “I get that there’s just some shit we don’t need to know, but you’re supposed to be a part of this prophecy or something, so maybe let us know if there’s something that could threaten your health so we don’t find ourselves short a chosen one.”

“Finally admitting that maybe there’s more to you than you think?”

“Fuck no,” Leof scoffed, and Neros laughed again. “Staying silent about it is just about the only way to keep Anthea from not talking my ear off about friendship for the rest of this trip. Try to channel your magic into the prongs, see if you can move them.”

Neros took a breath and did exactly that, thought of it as an extension of himself and tried to move his fingers. It worked—for half a second before his magic bubbled out, and caused the whole thing to collapse and frost over. Neros slumped in defeat, his heart sinking back into the lowest cavity of his rib cage. Leof, it seemed, was undeterred.

“Hm, a little more calibration, then,” the Ember murmured, picking a couple of the crystalline tears Neros had made when the pain was too much, looking at them in the light and starting to chip off the ice from the arm. Certain parts had been cut right through, but Leof’s fingers burned red hot as he took the broken edges, and melted them into the correct shape. The water from Neros’ ice gave it more of a shine. He melted the tears in there too. “Get some sleep. We’ll see how this thing looks when you wake up.”

“Mn, ok,” Neros mumbled, but he didn’t move from his place resting on Leof’s shoulder—didn’t even close his eyes, though they were growing heavier by the second. Instead, he kept watching; the ‘hand’ of the prosthetic resting palm to Leof’s palm as he worked the ice into the molten rock. “Y’know,” he murmured, his eyes easing shut in the low light. “S’almost like you’re holding my hand... ”

“I can stop if you want,” Leof’s voice didn’t threaten to, but he shook his head anyway.

“No, that... that’s okay.”

And with that, he let the quiet sounds lull him into slumber.

“Goodnight, Neros,” Leof mumbled. The melding would likely take all night, but if it got that sad look out of Neros’ eyes, it would be worth it. He paused a moment, took in the ease in which the Veturian slept and leaned in, leaving a kiss on his forehead without much thought. There would be time to examine these feelings of his later, when Neros wasn’t so fragile. Right now, he had an arm to build, and not a whole lot of time to do it.


End file.
